Poet and playwright Jamie Hale wants to do it all.
The disabled artistic director of CRIPtic Arts on attitude, access, and new show I Want To Live.
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Jamie Hale – disabled and trans playwright, poet, performer, artistic director, and more – is a very busy person.
As founding artistic director of CRIPtic Arts, they run showcases, workshops and retreats for d/Deaf and disabled creatives in a range of mediums. As a writer, they have recently released their first poetry pamphlet, and worked in the writers’ room for upcoming Netflix series Kaos. As an actor, they are about to appear in a rehearsed reading of their new play I Want To Live at Theatre Royal Stratford East.
“I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I wasn’t busy,” says Hale. “I have two day jobs, I’m doing a Masters in philosophy, politics and economics of health at UCL, and I have all my theatre and television work on top of that. It’s a wonderful place to be, and I feel very lucky to be busy when a lot of people aren’t, but it is somewhat hectic.”
Hale grew up in a small town in the home counties. They have written and performed poetry and prose since they were young, but it was only during their undergraduate degree – English and Spanish at Royal Holloway – that they started seriously considering it as a career.
A spot on the Barbican’s Open Lab residency scheme in 2018 allowed them the opportunity to develop their first full length solo show, NOT DYING. It was, Hale says, “a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster” at first, drawn together from different scraps they had written a few years earlier, and confronts something that was at the forefront of their mind at the time – “untimely mortality.”
“There was a period of time when things looked very, very grim for me in terms of health,” Hale says. “I was getting constant life-threatening infections, and my prognosis seemed very limited. Getting out of bed was a very rare and significant occasion. When I started to write NOT DYING, I couldn’t envision making it to thirty.”
Hale did not die, though, thanks to an experimental medical treatment, and NOT DYING became a show about exactly that. Hale performed it at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2019, and their career in the performing arts progressed.
They launched CRIPtic Arts with a one-off showcase of d/Deaf and disabled artists at the Barbican in 2019, then received funding to convert it into a full-time company; they worked in the writer’s room for Kaos and started developing their own TV ideas; they had their first poetry pamphlet, Shield, published by Verve Press, and were made one of three Jerwood Poetry Fellows.
“I feel like I have been given a second chance, and I don’t want to waste it,” Hale says. “I’ve made it to thirty, and my health is relatively stable. Things that were so threatening to my health, and things that were so threatening to my ability to do anything with my time are a lot better managed now. I have this drive to do things. I have this drive to be really busy.”
“I fundamentally want access to stop being seen as an administrative challenge and start being seen as a creative opportunity…”
Hale is quite private about their personal life - Jamie is actually their middle name - and about the specifics of their own disability, but they are acutely aware of the barriers D/deaf and disabled artists and audience members face in theatre, and vocal about the need to break them down. As well as running salons and showcases, CRIPtic Arts campaigns to improve accessibility for D/deaf and disabled artists in the performing arts industry.
At the moment, for example, it is conducting a study around the idea of “feasible minimum standards of access, below which an artistic project is not viable,” Hale explains. “It’s working out at what point a project becomes so inaccessible that people should be refusing to work on it, to programme it, or to fund it.”
“There’s actually an awful lot of research needed to establish that,” Hale continues. “Central to it is the idea that it has to be feasible, and what is feasible for a project with zero budget is different to what is feasible for a big project. At the end of it, though, I would love to see theatres signing up to say that they will not programme work that does not meet the minimum access requirement for the budget they are working with.”
Hale has also got their personal projects to pursue. They want to keep improving as an actor and performer – “We’ll see whether the talent matches the ambition there,” they laugh – and they are preparing to stage their short play I Want To Live as part of the Theatre Royal Stratford East’s Burn It Down programme. It is based on their own experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It was a terrifying time,” they say. “The issue at the heart of it, the issue facing the main character, is the fact that he can’t have the independent life he has fought for and built for himself and stay alive at the same time. He has to sacrifice one of those things. The characters in it are very different to me, but they are drawn from what it felt like to have underlying health conditions at the time.”
Hale themself will be appearing as the play’s central character, something they are feeling both apprehensive and enthusiastic about. “I thought I might as well give it a try,” they say. “The only reason I’ve got where I’ve got is by giving things a try. I’d never done a show before the Barbican’s Open Lab. I’d never curated before I curated for CRIPTtic. I just gave them a try, too. I just want to do things.”
What do you want to do?
There are loads of things I want to do. I want to write blockbuster television. I want to be creating work that people really engage with and adore and respond to. I also want to direct Shakespeare on a major stage because I love Shakespeare. I want to see people who got a start at CRIPtic go on to be successful. And I want to write the kind of poetry that people actually read.
What support do you need to get there?
Well, what I really want is people outside the disability theatre sphere to give me opportunities. I want to be invited to sit in rooms, to be an assistant director, to dramaturg. I want the chance to show people in the wider industry how hard I work.
And, when it comes to the industry, I fundamentally want access to stop being seen as an administrative challenge and start being seen as a creative opportunity.
How can people find out more about you?
People can come and see I Want To Live at the Theatre Royal Stratford on April 28. They can buy my poetry pamphlet. They can see and read a lot of my stuff via my website or via CRIPtic Arts’ website. I’m afraid I’m absolutely dreadful on social media, though.
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Fergus Morgan